


here comes the sun.

by ivermectin



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending (to some extent), Best Friends, Bisexual Dan Humphrey, Breaking Up & Making Up, Dan Humphrey is Not Gossip Girl, Endgame Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf, F/M, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Heartbreak, Lots of it., Lovesick Dan Humphrey, M/M, Minor Meddling via Nate Archibald (as you do), POV Nate Archibald, Pining, Summer Fling, Wingman Nate Archibald, but: unlikely, he never is in the fics i write, i might write something silly or something dark in which he is, post s5 finale, potential future Serena/Nate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Blair and Dan aren't a couple anymore, and Dan is heartbroken.Dan takes Nate with him to Rome. Nate just wants to be there for Dan, whatever that means.This is a Dan/Blair fix-it!
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald & Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald/Dan Humphrey
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	here comes the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> The ending isn't necessarily the happiest for Nate, but it ends optimistically anyway! I imagine Nate and Serena to get together later on in this AU, a few months after the end of the summer maybe.  
> Heartbreak is a central theme in this AU. there is also a lot of drinking, as you do.
> 
> title from the Beatles song!

“Come with me to Rome,” Dan tells Nate, and he looks absolutely wrecked. “Please.”

Nate puts a hand on Dan’s knee, leaning into his space. His hair is uncombed and messy in the way that curly hair is right after you get out of bed, even though it’s afternoon. His eyes are groggy, unfocused.

“I don’t get it,” Nate says. “Aren’t they expecting your girlfriend?”

Dan smiles in a self-desecrating way. “Don’t have one of those anymore. I can pull some strings, I’m sure nobody would protest to you being there. They’d look homophobic if they did.”

“Huh,” Nate says. “Don’t you think that’s homophobic of you? As in, using people’s response like that?”

“No?” Dan looks confused now, which is an improvement from deeply despairing, but still not a particularly fun look on him. “I’m bisexual, Nate. Why does everyone think I’m straight?”

“I’ve never seen you with a man, maybe that’s why,” Nate says awkwardly.

Dan laughs, and it sounds a little empty. “There was a thing with Carter Baizen. Fling, no strings, whatever. Maybe I should give him a call sometime.”

“Is that what you want?” Nate asks, trying to be a supportive friend. “A fling with _Carter Baizen_?”

Dan looks sad again. He shakes his head. “I want Blair _._ ”

Nate lets his fingers curl around Dan’s knee. “I know, bro. I’m sorry.”

Dan sighs, puts his head on Nate’s shoulder. His hair tickles where it brushes against Nate’s chin, but Nate doesn’t move away. He curls an arm around Dan instead, holding him. He knows heartbreak; there was the summer he spent getting over Serena, after all, and Dan had done this for him then, all through the summer. It’s true that his priority was managing a colicky baby, but he had been there for Nate as much as he could.

“I’ll come with you to Rome,” Nate promises. It’s the least he can do.

-

Nate thinks he’d be the father that his own father never was. This revelation comes when he coaxes Dan into attending all his writer’s retreats, and sits with him after and ensures that he does what he came to Rome to do; write.

He’s never had to take care of someone before in the way that he has to look after a heartbroken and lovesick Dan Humphrey.

Dan writes. Dan writes, Dan drinks, Dan spends a terrible amount of time lying on the couch in their shared hotel room, staring at the ceiling blankly.

He lets Nate read what he writes. The words are interwoven with sadness, pain and shame through the lens of a narrator who hates himself very deeply. There’s a love interest who’s a bit of a bitch, but in a likeable and empowered way. She’s made a lot of mistakes, but she’s better than her mistakes. And there’s the narrator; a drab man with nothing interesting about him at all, except the way he loves her. He loves her in a way that eats him from the inside, like a worm inside an apple, and it rots him out, and she doesn’t want him anymore. She never wanted him, anyway, but he saw it coming. He always knew what was inside him, that it was just a matter of time. That doesn’t change how much it shattered him, like glass dropped from a three storey building.

“This is going to be one gorgeous literary masterpiece,” Nate tells Dan.

Dan looks at him, his doe eyes sadder than ever. “Maybe, maybe not. I just want it to stop _hurting._ ”

-

The scene with the affair on the barstool, the parallels to the love interest’s first ex, the narrator’s first ex and a scheme, and he set himself up for this, maybe everything was rigged, but he kissed back, and he thought he’d been dumped so he fucked her, too, against the table, his hands warm on her skin and his heart in his throat and –

Nate stops reading.

“Did you and Serena….” Nate asks, looking up from the paper at Dan.

Dan, who’s been watching him read with a look that is part sheepish, part afraid, nods. “Poetic, isn’t it? You and Serena, me and Serena… Blair. We’re the same man.”

Nate nudges at Dan’s shoulder with his shoulder. “If I had to be somebody else, I’d choose you,” he says, and he can tell by the look on Dan’s face that nobody’s said that to him ever. Still, that’s not all Nate has to say.

“But Dan, it’s not the same. You _love_ her.”

“She doesn’t love me,” Dan says. He gets up, walks over to the mini fridge.

“Watch your liver, Humphrey,” Nate says, because Dan’s an adult, sure, but he should have a drinking limit.

“Don’t call me Humphrey,” Dan says, something dead in his tone of voice. He takes an overly generous chug of vodka, straight from the bottle.

Nate winces.

-

“How did you get over Serena?” Dan asks.

“Lots of sex,” Nate says. “You remember that. Chuck’s little black book.”

Dan looks at Nate. “Nobody wants to fuck me.”

Nate meets his look. “That a challenge?” he asks, and he reaches for Dan.

With deft fingers he undoes the buttons on Dan’s shirt, pulls it off.

“I’m not a girl,” Dan says, eyes wary.

“Yes, but skin is skin, and I’m going to kiss it,” Nate says, tonguing one of Dan’s nipples. “You might need to guide me through the things I don’t know how to do.”

Dan smiles, and in that millisecond, he doesn’t look quite as heartbroken. “It would be my delight.”

-

They press the double beds together, no gap in between.

“Before I liked Serena, I had a crush on you,” Dan tells Nate as they lie there in the dark, next to each other.

Nate thinks back to then, all those years ago.

“I wish we’d been friends, back then,” he tells Dan, his hand on Dan’s cheek, fingers tracing the shape of his forehead.

Dan’s eyes are solemn. “Me too. But hey, we found each other now.”

-

Nate could be happy with Dan forever, but he knows Dan is still in love with Blair. It’s in every line of his body, even though he’s distracting himself with the sex and with alcohol and with bitter stories about himself which Nate reads and gives feedback on (“I did work as the CEO of a news outlet, Dan. I promise I know how to give constructive literary criticism.”)

He tells Dan to come clean to Blair about things with the Shepard wedding, and Dan, who is unwilling but will listen to Nate if push comes to shove, calls her and does just that. He spends the rest of the day in bed, blowing off a workshop event, the first time he’s done that all summer. He also declines to spend time with Nate.

Nate spends a while thinking about it, about what he should do. Ultimately, he does the thing he knows he should not – waits until Dan’s asleep, takes the notebook in which Dan’s been writing the short stories he’s working on (yes, he’s been writing on paper, he says that he types up revised versions of the stories later, which Nate doesn’t get, but it’s Dan’s process, so whatever) and finds a place that scans it for him. He returns the notebook to where it was, in the drawers, and keeps the PDF on a pen drive. He keeps the pen drive in the drawer that’s on his cabinet.

It stays there for a week.

-

It’s ultimately Dan that makes him realise he’s got to go forward with this little scheme. Dan, who admits in a voice that sounds like he’s not sober, and not too far from tears, that he thinks he will never be over Blair Waldorf.

“They’ll put it on my gravestone,” Dan tells him shakily.

He buries his salt damp face against Nate’s shoulder, and Nate wants to say it, to say _I love you,_ but he’s Dan’s friend before he became his summer fling, so he keeps mum. He kisses the top of Dan’s head, holds him close.

And in the morning, when Dan’s in a writing session, he takes the pen drive out of the drawer, and drafts an email to Blair Waldorf. After reading it over thrice, fixing typos in what he’s written in the body of the email, he hits send.

-

Blair calls Dan in the evening, and he goes to their bedroom to take the call, while Nate sits by the coffee table, waiting. Dan’s on the phone for three hours, but when he comes back out, he’s glowing. His eyes are red, and it’s obvious he’s been crying, but his body language is different. The way he holds himself is somehow lighter.

“We discussed everything,” Dan says, and there’s such a strong pang of relief in his voice that it makes Nate feel like he can breathe easy, too. “We’re going to try again, and this time it’s going to work. It’s going to be _better._ ”

“Yeah?” Nate asks, watching Dan.

“Yes,” Dan says. “I’m going to, you know, give her the benefit of doubt a lot more, try not to jump to conclusions. And she’s not going to break up with me over email, she promised,” and he’s grinning, and Nate wasn’t expecting a joke like that from Dan just yet; it’s been so soon.

Dan gives him a hug, and Nate hugs back, exhaling deeply.

“I know you went behind my back and did something shady for this to happen,” Dan says. “Blair says you sent her some of my stories? I should be pissed off, but you know, you literally just fixed this, so it’s a non-issue. Thank you, Nate.”

“Of course,” Nate says. “It’s the job of a best friend.”

He doesn’t say what he really wants to say, which is, _Dan, if you love her, you should not doubt it, you should let yourself open up to her, you should ask her to stay with you,_ because that’d make him a hypocrite.

Nate lets go of the people he loves, every damn time.

-

Dan compiles his short stories, sends the manuscript to Alessandra. He’s finalised the love interest’s name to “Brooke,” some inside joke he and Blair have, probably connected to the fact that it’s _Dan_ who lives in Brooklyn and not her. The narrator’s name is Andy, which Nate had thought strange, until he’d remembered Dan’s middle name was Randolph, and Dan couldn’t very well name his self-insert character _Randy._

Once the manuscript is sent, it’s only a matter of time before _Andy’s Sweet Bitter Affair_ has a publication date, and Alessandra tells Dan that she loves it; that everyone will love it.

Dan dedicates the book to Nate, something about _my guardian angel Nate, thank you for the summer in Rome,_ and Nate thinks that if heartbreak is audible, Dan would hear his heart shatter. He just smiles, though.

Never let it be said that Nate Archibald doesn’t appreciate irony.

-

From the airport, Nate calls Serena. She’s drunk when she picks up, but she _does_ pick up.

“Nate, hiiiii,” she says, giggling.

“Hey,” Nate says, a little concerned. Years of taking care of Serena have made him intuitive to when things aren’t how they should be, and the fact that he didn’t know until right this moment is a warning sign. “What’s going on? Where are you, I’ll come to you.”

“I’ll text you my location if you promise to party,” Serena laughs. “It’s a bit lonely all on my ownsome.” She sounds happy, but Nate’s been around Serena when she’s in this state of non-sobriety; it’s only a matter of time before Tearful Serena will make an appearance, and there’s only so much he can do for her over the phone.

“I’ll come to you,” Nate says, aching. “Serena?”

“Yes, Nate?”

He swallows. He _needs_ to make this confession, and he knows enough about her feelings for Dan to know that this is an educated risk to take.

“I’m in love with Dan, too,” he tells her. “We can feel that particular ache together.”

Serena hums, possibly an affirmative.

“Where are you?” Nate asks. “I’m booking tickets from the airport.”

“Louisiana,” she says. “New Orleans, to be specific.”

“See you soon,” Nate says.

“Okay,” Serena says. She sounds like sunlight.

Nate wonders if he’s flying from one heartbreak to the next.

He cannot find it in himself to care.

**Author's Note:**

> If enough people prod me, I might actually write the Serenate sequel for this. unlikely, but not impossible.


End file.
